


Got You

by giraffles



Series: FMA Rarepair Week 2016 [4]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Pining, Post-Canon, Post-Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 18:21:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7981477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giraffles/pseuds/giraffles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>‘Cause it’s love you can’t do without, and now try to hear me out.</i>
</p>
<p>It has been 319 days since Sheska last saw Winry. She remembers this because her memory is photographic, and she <i>can’t</i> forget, which has both helped and hindered her in her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Got You

It has been 319 days since Sheska last saw Winry. She remembers this because her memory is photographic, and she _can’t_ forget, which has both helped and hindered her in her life. It’s been nice when she needs to regurgitate books and reports and conference notes for her superiors. It’s terrible when her head has been too full of information to do anything else.

They still keep in touch, even after their lives have taken different turns. Sheska still works for the State, helping where she can to rebuild something that’s crumbled beneath it’s own weight more than once. It’s still a shitty system, full of old men who don’t want change, but she has to hope that they’re making progress. Slowly but surely. That has to count for something, right? And she can’t go without the pay that’s been needed to support her ailing mother.

A mother that is still bugging her to find someone nice to settle down with. Even after Sheska told her, in no uncertain terms, that she doesn’t even like boys and who on this green earth would want _her_. But her mother would just smile and pat her arm, and tell her that they’re out there. They’re like a new story, waiting to be discovered. She always knew how to sucker Sheska in with a romantic line about metaphors and literature.

She still doesn't hold out much hope. She keeps her head down, does her job, surrounds herself with tomes both old and new and tries not to suffocate in the occasional landslide. Yet she can't help the way her heart leaps into her mouth when Winry calls to say she's visiting Central.

      “Is that okay?” she asks when Sheska fumbles for words, trying not to remember how she smells and how her eyes always caught the light. It fails of course, because her memory is flawless. “I can ask Mrs. Hughes if--”

      “N-no!” she manages to stutter out at the last moment, tugging the phone cord into nervous knots. “No, it's fine! I just, just have to clean! That's it. I have to clean up.”

She hopes she doesn't sound like a complete awkward mess. And it's not as though it's untrue, Sheska hardly ever gets visitors, so things have a tendency to acquire dust and become cluttered. ‘Cluttered’ was being kind and mild.

      “Alright,” Winry’s voice on the other end may have the metal ting of phone wires, but it still manages to sound musical, “I’ll see you soon!”

 

* * *

 

It's been 341 days since she's last seen Winry Rockbell, and her ridiculous crush the size of Xing hasn't diminished in all that time. More than once she considered calling her back and telling her that she had to work overtime. In the north. For the foreseeable future. Instead she goes to her mother in tears and looking for answers, and she tells Sheska to pick out a nice bouquet of flowers before she heads to the train station. She almost does, but decides against it when she can't remember Winry ever saying she liked flowers, much less which kind. Better safe than sorry.

She gets to the train station half an hour early. Sheska paces back and forth for fifteen, tries to remember how to breath for five, and contemplates the release of death for the last ten. Then the train finally began to pull in, rolling along and blaring the whistle, heralding her decent into madness. It’s too late to back out now.

So she waits and watches for the familiar tall cut of her figure, stepping out from the depths of the train car and into the platform. Sheska is nearly vibrating out of her skin. And there she is, as gorgeous as the last time she saw her, a muse on earth if she ever knew one. Who could also knock out a grown man with her mean right hook. Sheska’s mother would probably love her.

No. Nope. She is not thinking of introducing Winry to her mother, she’s not even going to entertain that fantasy, she’s going to wave her down and pretend that everything is fine. Because it is fine. Absolutely nothing is wrong here. Nope. Just peachy, thank you very much.

It’s not until she gets closer that Sheska notices something about her is different.

      “Did you cut your hair?” Are the first words she blurts out. Not a hello, how are you, or even an I missed you. She’s certainly on a roll today. But her hair _is_ different, it’s been long for all the time she’s known Winry, and now she’s missing the bulk of it. Sheska manages to pull herself together enough for a compliment. “It’s nice.”

And it is nice, a short angled bob, longer in the front than the back. It’s really nice. She looks really nice. Oh Socrates, save her from this torment. Winry grins and runs a hand through it.

      “You think so?” Her eyes light up, blue and stunning like the ocean she’s read about but never seen since the border relations with Creta are still so rocky. Winry would like the ocean, she thinks. “I wanted to try something different.”

      “It’s nice!” She repeats, a broken record. She knows so many words, she’s like a walking thesaurus, and yet this is all she can say. “I’m glad you could make it.”

      “Me too.” And then Winry is dragging her into a tight hug, and she knows fully in that moment she’s only been along for the ride all this time.

 

* * *

 

Winry is patient during the week, waiting for her to get off work for them to wander the streets of Central together. She must confess that she doesn’t know the local hot spots of social life, but she can name every landmark and rattle off it’s history. Sheska tries to pick the most interesting ones, and not talk to much, though she’s sure she fails. They visit the Hughes, both the living and the dead— Elysia has gotten so big and the Brigadier General’s headstone is weathered and worn. Most of Central has been rebuilt since the incident with the gates and the alchemy and everything she’d rather not know about, thank you very much. It’s hard to believe so much time has already passed.

When this all began, she was just a teen. Now she’s an adult, doing adult things like working for a living and avoiding human contact and not coming to terms with her emotions. Very adult things to be doing.

Even as they buy ice cream at a local stand and end up getting it all over each other in a playful fight. It’s all sticky and cold and Sheska hasn’t laughed this hard in months. She can’t help the way her rib cage swells when Winry _squeals_ in delight at the automail shop she tracked down, and though Sheska doesn’t understand all the mechanics of it, she takes joy in her joy. Like suddenly seeing her happy is of the utmost priority. She thinks about her leaving, and it begins to cast a gray shadow on the day.

Or, that could also be the storm that’s suddenly moved in— not unusual for the summer months, but Sheska hadn’t though to bring an umbrella or a coat. And the rain comes in hard and fast, relentless, even if it’s warm it still starts to soak them to the skin. Winry has her little black shrug that she tries to hold over them as they dash for cover, but it’s a futile effort against the force of nature. The absurdity of it sends them into fits of giggles that don’t stop once they’re under the eves of a nearby house.

Sheska gets the strangest sense of deja vu. She’s read this before, this very scenario, in trashy romance literature that she hides under all the scholarly tomes. It’s a guilty pleasure, a lonely pastime, and she can’t believe she’s thinking about imitating it.

But she’s _right there_ , newly shorn hair plastered against her face and shirt clinging dangerously to her form, and they have to stand so close to stay out of the downpour. They say that fiction imitates life, but she thinks this is pushing it. Sheska is beginning to wonder if she really cares.

It’s easy to lean in and kiss her. She knows how it works, it’s not as though she’s never had a partner— though she’s very out of practice. And it shows in the way she fumbles, and the way they knock foreheads, and then she’s stammering out an apology because _god_ that was dumb. What was she thinking?

      “Sorry,” Sheska continues, “Sorry, sorry sorry—”

But then Winry is laughing again, sunshine in a rainstorm, and they’re properly kissing and— _oh_. This must be what they mean when they say electricity, when they talk about chemistry and spontaneous combustion. About fire on your fingertips and light in your soul. It’s something she never, ever wants to let go of.

And maybe, if she’s reading body language right and not misconstruing the way Winry’s hands have a death grip on her own, maybe she won’t have to.


End file.
